


Tensile Fibres

by Gefionne



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Reunion, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-01-25 15:02:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gefionne/pseuds/Gefionne
Summary: Upon their reunion at Winterfell, Gendry lets Arry go and embraces the woman Arya has become.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Borrows from s08e01 and s08e02, but goes off script significantly.

_Burrowing down_  
_Bury your heart away_  
_Look at you now that you're older_  
  
\- "Glass Bones," Shearwater

 

The shaping of dragonglass takes a keen hand and far more time than they have. The great forges at Winterfell have been burning since Gendry took charge of them, what smiths or apprentices he could muster working through the night and sleeping in shifts. He sees the lords and ladies coming and going while the smallfolk make ready, not unlike how it once was in King’s Landing, when it was still a waning summer and he was barely out of boyhood. He didn’t seek to catch their attention with anything more than his work then, and he didn’t now. His task is simple: arm the people and then be ready to fight when the Night King comes.

But among the kings and queens and nobles, he wasn’t expecting to find Arya. The last time he saw her, she was a slip of a girl in boy’s clothing spitting at him for choosing others over her. Family she said they’d be. He always knew better. And it seems his choice was the right one for her; she’s grown into a fierce, if still diminutive she-wolf. She carries a blade and gave him plans for a dragonglass weapon she wants to wield herself.

She brought the parchment two days before, when he was giving Clegane the new axe he cut for him. “You’ve gotten better,” she said once she saw the axe.

“Yeah, thanks,” he replied dumbly. “So have you.” She regarded him steadily, betraying nothing. “I mean, you look...good.” The words were fumbling, foolish. Still she made him feel like a stupid, plodding bull.

However, she said, “Thanks. So do you.”

He wondered for a moment if that bared responding to, but decided there was nothing more to say. And he had work to do. He turned to walk back to his table, but he could hear her following him. “It’s not a bad place to grow up here,” he said, “if it wasn’t so cold.”

“Stay close to that forge then,” she told him.

Before he thought the better of it, he said, “Is that a command, Lady Stark?”

She frowned from her place beside him. “Don’t call me that.”

He heard Arry in her voice there and he pressed, if just to see if that little scrap of a girl was still inside her: “As you wish, m’lady.”

It wasn’t immediate, but her mouth softened and she smiled. Looking down, strangely demure, she laughed. Gendry did his best not to let his surprise and pleasure show. It was so rare to earn one of Arry’s smiles—not that he much tried back then. This one brightened her severity, a sudden and unexpected light in the dark of the forge.

“Here’s my wish,” she said, unrolling the piece of parchment to hand to him. “Can you make it?”

He looked at the page, seeing a kind of double-bladed staff topped with dragonglass. “What do you need something like this for?” he asked.

She was direct: “Can you make it or not?”

“You already have a sword,” he said, nearly a grumble. He nodded at the other blade on her belt. “What’s that?” She drew a dagger and held it out for him to take. “That’s Valyrian steel,” he said, and offering a teasing smile, added, “I always knew you were just another rich girl.”

She snatched the blade back and sheathed it. “You don’t know any other rich girls,” she said. With a smug grin, she walked away from him. He looked after her and saw her turn to give him one more arch glance before she disappeared around the corner and out of the forge.

He hasn’t seen her since, but he hears whispers from others around the castle that she flits among them, sometimes noticed, sometimes not. He’s not shocked that she can fade into a crowd when she wants it. She might not have fooled him with Arry those years ago, but she’s clever—perhaps more so than anyone else he’s ever known.

Half of him is relieved that she leaves him be; he’s not sure how to balance his address to the lady and to his old friend. The latter is there, he recognizes, but there’s a stolid mask over her that she seems to have put on as she grew. It’s not that he doesn’t know her anymore, it’s that perhaps he never did.

The urgency in the castle keeps him from dwelling too much on her, but just when he thinks he’s let her fall by the wayside, she appears. He’s working in the gray morning, plunging a length of heated steel into water, when he sees her, and she’s not just arrived; she’s been watching him. Her face is still calculatedly blank, and it gets his hackles up. Arry never hid anything, save for being a girl—but that’s beside the point.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” he calls with an edge of annoyance.

Unaffected, she replies, “Have you made my weapon yet?”

He grabs one of the dragonglass hand axes they’ve been forging overnight and holds it out to her as he leaves the forge-side and goes out into the crisp open air. “As soon as I’m done making a few hundred of these.”

She takes the axe, swinging it as if to gauge its worth. “You should make mine first,” she says, “and make sure it’s stronger than this.”

Her dismissive tone rankles him, and he snatches the axe up and drives it hard into a nearby stump. “It’s strong enough,” he says darkly. As he goes to a row of spear tips, he continues, “You plan to fight, then, do you?”

“Of course,” she replies. “This is my home; I’m going to defend it with my life. Are you a fighter now?”

He glances up at her. She’s standing to his left, leaning against a pillar. “I’ve done my share,” he says.

Her interest is piqued. “You fought them?”

He picks up one of the spear tips, testing the blade on the leather cuff he wears on his wrist. “I did. Some of them.”

“How many?”

“A few,” he says cagily, having no desire to dredge up the memories. “That was enough.”

“What are they like?” she asks.

“Bad,” he replies. “Really bad.”

“‘Really bad?’” She sweeps around to the table across from him. “Even a bull can do better than ‘really bad.’ What do they look like? What do they smell like? How do they move? How hard are they to kill?”

He braces himself on the table to look into her face. “I know you want to fight. I know you’re not scared of rapers or murders or… But this is different. This is death. You want to know what they’re like? Death. That’s what they’re like.”

He expects her to balk, maybe, to admit that it’s too much, but she only reaches down and draws one of the spear tips up, weighing it in her hand. “I know death,” she says, and she throws the tip with lethal grace to thud firmly into the pillar across the way. “He’s got many faces.” Another tip hits squarely next to the other, startling a man sitting nearby. He scampers away as Gendry turns sharply back to her. She’s perfectly collected, holding one more tip. She says, “I look forward to seeing this one,” and lands another perfect shot into the pillar.

Gendry, struck, huffs a foggy breath. “When did you learn to do that?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “After you left me.” There’s ice in her voice.

He proceeds carefully: “I can’t say I’m sorry for that. I did what I thought was right. And you know we never could be...what you said we could. You’re a lady of this house. Before, you were a princess. I’m still only a smith.”

“There have been stranger families,” she says, folding her arms behind her back under the fur-lined half-cloak she wears. “But I suppose neither of us would be what we are had we stayed together.”

“We both still ended up at Winterfell,” he says. “Save for the cold, it’s all you said it would be. This is the finest forge I’ve worked in.” The sound of hammers on steel accompanies him, familiar, comforting sounds that give him purpose. If he dies fighting the army of the dead, it’s that he’ll miss the most: the purpose and the reward of finishing a fine blade or chestplate.

“What happened to your fine helmet?” Arya asks. “You loved that stupid thing more than your own life.”

Gendry hangs his head. “I sold it for the silvers to eat.”

“Shame,” she says. “But at least you can make another one.”

“I don’t have the time.” He’s not thought much of that thing in a long while. It was once his masterwork, but as she told him, he’s gotten better. He says, with eyebrows lifted, “I have a weapon to make for you, after all.”

A smile curls her lips. “You’d best finish it soon. I don’t like to wait.”

He chuckles. “You never did.” He casts another glance at the spear tips embedded in the pillar. “But a skill like that takes patience to master.”

“And practice,” she says. “Maybe, if we live, I’ll tell you about it.”

“I’d like to hear that tale,” he says as he comes to face her again.

She nods curtly. “Finish my weapon and I’ll consider it.”

“I’ll get right on it,” he tells her, but she’s already gone.

 

* * *

 

He shapes the dragonglass blades through the afternoon, pausing only to take some soup and bread to keep his strength up. The winter’s been hard on his body, as it has all the others’. He’s leaner, but his work in the forge keeps him strong. A few thin-faced girls linger by, chattering in each other’s ears as they peer at him. It’s been since he went north that he’s lain with a woman and he does stop to think that it might be worth losing a quarter candle’s worth of work or sleep for a tumble. But the girls’ complexions are ashy and there’s dirt under their fingernails. He shouldn’t be so particular, and yet they don’t appeal to him. He keeps his gaze trained on his work until they go away.

The length of sanded and stained wood he finds for Arya’s bladed staff is sturdy—enough to withstand hard use. He wraps leather around the center for a grip, and for a little decoration. He wishes he could spend more time with it, but he doesn’t dare. When it’s finished, he sets it aside until he can bring it to her toward evening. It means he’ll have to find her, perhaps somewhere in the castle. He’s not been inside it proper, and he’ll feel out of place there. Crossing the threshold into the nobles’ realm feels like trespassing where he doesn’t belong. He hopes Arya will be elsewhere when he seeks her out.

An apprentice appears with a question and he turns his focus to that, putting her from his mind for now. He fashions plain blades and passes them to pages who will see them to new owners, many of them farmers and cobblers and boys barely over fourteen. They’ve never wielded a sword and it will likely be the only thing standing between them and their deaths. But Gendry had never been a warrior before he picked up his mace at the Wall, and he had survived to come this far: Winterfell. If things were different he might have been able to make his home here. He’d like to be close to Arya, he thinks, even if a distant part of her days.

 

* * *

 

“Is the Lady Arya here?” he asks after dark, standing at the servants’ door to the castle.

The solid woman who is peeking out has deep-set lines in her face and suspicious green eyes. “What do _you_ want with her?” she demands.

Gendry’s face burns. “I’ve something she requested.” He’s carrying the weapon, but it’s behind his back, held against it like a second spine.

“She’s not here,” says the servant. “Don’t know where she’s got to. She tells no one her business.” She sniffs. “Least of all you, it seems.”

He gives her an admonishing frown, but backs away. “Fine. Goodnight.”

She shuts the door in his face with a heavy _thunk_ , leaving him in the cold and with nowhere to go to find Arya. He lingers there for a time, racking his brain for some inspiration. Little comes, and he sighs, resigned to hunting the castle’s grounds until he can find her. With the weapon at his side, he ventures back toward the forge. He’s wasting time he could be using to finish the last of the weapons, or sharpening blades at the whetstone. However, as he’s passing a storage shed adjacent to it, he pauses. By some preternatural sense, he’s drawn inside, and there she is.

She has a shortbow in her hands and she’s pulling the string back. The nocked arrow is steady, and then she lets it fly. It lands in the center of a makeshift target, one of several shafts planted in the wood.

“Are you planning on lingering in the shadows all night?” she asks without even turning toward him. She nocks another arrow and shoots it with deadly precision, just like the spear heads that morning.

Gendry steps into the shed, closing the door to keep the chill and blowing snow out. He offers the weapon to her as she lays her bow down on a crate. She takes it from him and says, “This’ll do.” She spins it deftly, as if she’s already used to it.

“No ‘thank you?’” he says wryly. “No ‘fine job, Gendry?’”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Fishing for praise isn’t becoming.”

He laughs coldly. For once his breath doesn’t fog in front of his face. “I might have expected as much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.

“That you’re an entitled lady after all,” he replies. “No gratitude for work well done. You just call for it.”

Arya balances the weapon in her open palm. Of course it stills there; Gendry knows he’s done well with it. “I knew you’d do it right before I even asked,” she says. “There was never any question of the quality.” She flips her hand to grasp the leather wrapping and flicks one blade forward, holding it at the level of Gendry’s throat. “But if you want to be told… I’m impressed.”

He stands stock still, knowing the dangerous edges of the blade could slice right through him. “Thank you,” he says.

Arya withdraws the weapon and sets it down on the crate by her bow. “Is everything ready for us to fight?”

“As ready as it can be.”

She inclines her head. “And what will you be doing with your night, then, if there are no more swords to make? Sleeping? Finding a girl to warm your bed?”

That catches him off guard, and he doesn’t care for her displeased tone. “Sleep would be the most sensible,” he says, “but I don’t think I’ll be able to settle my nerves enough for it.”

“Are you afraid?” she asks.

“Of course,” he replies. “Aren’t you?”

She only presses her lips together, giving away nothing. When she turns her eyes back up to him, she once again bewilders him. “Have you been with many women? Maybe the Red Woman who took you?”

“No!” he is quick to say. “I wasn’t with her. She only wanted me for my blood.”

Arya’s expression is inquisitive. “Why would she want you for that?”

Gendry hesitates, having told no one this and, in fact, doing what he could to forget it. “For some spell. I’m...Robert Baratheon’s bastard.”

Her astonishment is plain, but it settles into inquiry as she studies him. She comes closer, raising a hand to his cheek, touching his brow. “I can see it,” she says. “You’ve dark hair like him, and I was told he was brawny in his conquering days. The eyes, too. Is that why you were sent away from King’s Landing?”

He nods. “Bastards like me—and there were many more—made it plain enough the queen’s children weren’t the king’s get. If she’d known about us, I think she would have had us all killed.”

“You were lucky, then,” Arya says. Her fingers trail down to his chest, right above his heart.

“Suppose you could call it that.”

She presses her hand against the leather of his jerkin. “Have you sired bastards, too?”

Gendry’s gut twists. “I wouldn’t. The women I’ve been with, they were...careful.”

“How many?” she asks. He stalls again and she purses her lips. “You don’t remember?”

“I haven’t kept count,” he lies.

She gives him a disbelieving look. “Yes you did.”

He swallows and admits, “Three.”

Taking her hand from him, she pulls off her gloves. “We might die soon,” she says as she abandons them on the railing nearby. “If that’s so, I want to know what it’s like.”

Gendry feels as if he’s been slapped. He reads her meaning clearly enough, and he wouldn’t dare. She approaches him again; he nearly backs away. “Arya,” he says, but then she’s kissing him.

Her lips are dry and hard against his, almost too rough. She cups his cheek to pull him to her. He’s so dumbstruck that he can’t return the kiss; he just stands there and lets her do as she pleases. She’s not experienced, that much is clear, but what she lacks in knowledge she makes up for in enthusiasm. She’s first to break the kiss and Gendry is left to pant, overcome. Their eyes meet and he can see himself reflected in hers. He’s apprehensive and tense. She kisses him again before he can speak.

Her nimble fingers work the tongue of his belt free from the buckle, making it clatter loudly in the quiet of the little room. She’s so slight—almost delicate, even though he knows she’s as pernicious as the sting of Valyrian steel—and yet she fills all the space, making _him_ seem small.

The initial shock of her insistent kiss is wearing off and the reality of what she’s doing is coming sharply into his mind. At once she’s little Arry—all in leather and dirty from the road—but so too is she Arya, lady of Winterfell and smelling of rosemary soap. And she tastes—Seven Hells she _tastes_ of mint, as if she’s been chewing the leaves. Maybe she has, but he doesn’t think this was her intention. Still, perhaps she’d been planning this all along; he understands her even less now than he did when she was Arry.

He regains some clarity at that, and, finding his voice at last, says, “Wait. This is madness.” He reaches for her wrists to stop her, but she jerks them free and continues to unlace his clothes. “Arya,” he tries again.

She dares to smile at him from her position a head shorter, peering up into his face. “Gendry,” she says, almost mocking. She tugs at the sides of his jerkin, loosening it enough to get it off. She grabs hold of it and starts to it push over his shoulders.

He stares down at her determined expression, her set jaw, and he recognizes Arry’s blunt conviction. She won’t stop, maybe not even if he begs her. In all likelihood she’ll call him stupid and a coward if he tries. So he lets her shove his jerkin away. It catches on his biceps, which are as high as she can reach. She might be a woman grown, but she’s still small; he could wrap his arms around her and envelope her completely. He could overpower her and shove her away, but he knows she’d not forgive him for it. But neither would her kingly brother forgive him for taking her maidenhead. Which is worse, he can’t decide.

“Are you going to help me or not?” Arya demands in that petulant way he remembers well. But she’s markedly different, with her combed hair hanging to her shoulders rather than messily cropped like a boy’s, and her hands are resting on his chest once more. They’re petite, but far from a child’s. _She’s_ not a child, there’s no mistaking that.

Uncertainty still churns in his gut, but he takes hold of his jerkin and pulls it away. It’s freeing, as if he can actually fill his constricted lungs without it. Arya wastes no time pulling his shirt from the high waistband of his trousers, and her fingertips are cool against his skin as she slips her hands under to touch his stomach. The muscles contract, maybe from the cold, maybe from the sheer unreality of this moment. She’s not tentative in exploring him, sliding her palms up to his chest and shoulders.

“Is this the first time you’ve touched a man?” he asks. He both craves and fears the answer. He’s never been anyone’s first, let alone that of a noblewoman. That should stop him dead, but, shamefully, he feels blood drop to his groin.

She regards him steadily. “A live one, yes.”

Gendry recoils. “ _What_?”

Arya laughs lightly. “I’ve seen a lot of bodies. I’ve cleaned the flesh of the dead and felt the grinding of a blade on bone as I drive it into flesh.” She digs a finger between two of Gendry’s ribs for emphasis, but then softens her touch again, bringing her hands to his belly. “I’ve never done this.”

His throat tightens as she takes fistfuls of his shirt and lifts it up to expose him. She looks genuinely prurient, but pensive as she surveys what little of him is visible. The women he’s been with before have had more men in their beds than he can count, and seeing another one was nothing new; but she studies him with a kind of appreciation he’s never enjoyed in a lover.

 _Lover_.

It hits him like the blow of a hammer to a shield. If they do this, he’ll be, if only for one bedding, the lady Arya Stark’s lover. In an instant, Arry disappears—perhaps gone forever—and Arya takes shape in earnest. He sees her as if for the first time: round, soft features; elegant, tapering neck, white like a seashell; pretty lips that were just kissing his. There’s color high in her cheeks and her gray eyes are radiant with interest—in him.

The fears and hesitancy fade and he takes her by the waist, pulling her against him. She leans into the embrace as he ducks his head to kiss her. This time he parts his lips and gives her lower one a nip. She draws in a quick breath through her nose, but allows him to soothe the spot with his tongue. Under his shirt, she wraps her arms around his neck to draw him further down to her. He goes willingly as she opens her mouth for him to slip inside.

“Is this the first time you’ve kissed a man, too?” he asks when they part, their brows still touching.

Her reply comes airly: “What difference does it make?”

He tightens his hold on her. “Tell me.”

“Stupid bull,” she murmurs. “Yes.”

The rush of satisfaction surges through him in a burning wave and he brings a hand to her face. His thumb he touches to her mouth. When she opens it to draw the finger inside, his knees go weak. He can’t get his shirt off fast enough after that. He nearly tears it from over his head, throwing it uncaringly onto the ground. Arya’s leather jerkin is now an awful impediment, and he has to get it off as quickly as possible. He fumbles with the fastenings, cursing his shaking hands.

“Let me,” she says. She takes over for him, deft in releasing the clasps. When she sheds the thing, it falls back behind her, leaving her in a thin linen shirt tied up to her throat.

Gendry pulls the laces until they give way. The linen parts to bare the dip of her collarbones. He stoops to press his lips there, drawing in her clean, herbal scent. He pauses only briefly before moving along the curve of her neck. The kisses he lands there are light and dry, but the small sound she makes has him yearning to elicit more. Whores put on a show of enjoying the act—loud, garish; Arya’s half sighed murmur is genuine.

She lets him nuzzle his way up to her ear, which he nibbles. Her arms are still tight around him, short nails digging into his back. He wants her to drag them harder, leaving red marks that will last for hours after. He wants to wear the evidence of this, so when she inevitably leaves him, he’ll be able to convince himself it was real.

When he does draw back, he sees that her eyes are glassy and her pink lips are parted as she breathes through her mouth. He did that to her, and it sends him reeling. She seems to have more of her wits about her, and she releases him in order to lift her shirt up and away. Gendry can’t keep his eyes from going wide when he sees the scars across her belly and sides. He wants to ask what happened, but he can’t—not just now; maybe later. There’s a breastband tight around her chest, but it won’t take but a few tugs of the laces to pull it away. Her breasts aren’t overlarge: just a handful each. Gendry is sure he’s never wanted to hold something as much in his life.

Arya moves to the ties of the breastband, but he stills her hand. “Not yet,” he says. “The rest first.”

She raises an eyebrow, but relents, going for the laces of his breeches instead. She pauses there to turn her eyes down. Gendry tenses as he realizes how hard he is, how prominently he strains against the laces. This is a moment where she could change her mind and he wouldn’t fault her. She’s a maid, after all, and he’s not a small man. However, she cups him instead of pulling away, rubbing through the leather. He grasps her shoulders to steady himself.

The laces loosen and soon the leather parts to give him some relief. He wears threadbare smallclothes beneath, which she reveals as she pushes his breeches down his legs. She stops at the tops of his boots, saying, “Oh, hells.”

Gendry actually laughs, albeit weakly. “There’s no good way to do this,” he says. “Let me just…” He takes a few short, awkward steps back toward the sacking in the corner. It’s the closest thing to a bed in the room—far from perfect, but acceptable. He crouches down and sits, only somewhat ungainly.

Ayra is standing in the same place, head cocked to the right, but then she comes to his side and sits, too. She starts unlacing her boots. He follows suit, and for a moment the burning need cools. In that short time, they’re two companions again, just stripping down for the night to sleep in twin bedrolls. But as Arya tosses her boots away, she lifts her hips and pushes her breeches down, kicking them off. In the passing of only a heartbeat, she’s crawled into Gendry’s lap, settling with her legs on either side of his. Her arms come around his neck. He holds her there, reveling in even her scant weight.

She holds his gaze unabashedly as she removes the breastband. She takes his hands and presses them to her chest, and, just as he thought, each breast fills his palm and no more. Her skin is heated and soft—too soft to be handled by his smith’s hands. Still, he can’t take them or his eyes off her. He gently touches her, up to the peaks of her breasts. As he brushes callused fingertips across her, she makes another wonderful sound.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her.

She gives him an indulgent smile. “You blind as well as stupid?” she says.

He growls, taking her by the waist once more and pulling her in until his face is at the level of her breasts. There’s nothing he can say that will convince her, he knows, so he takes her nipple into his mouth and tongues it until she gasps. Her fingers slide into his short hair, an encouragement. He sucks, but not too hard, preferring to tease before he moves to the other nipple. He strokes her sides as he does it, and she cradles his head.

Three women, he said, and he remembers them, but he knows there’s never been one like her. She’s so lithe and smooth—untouched. She’s had blood on her hands and there are scars on her body, but no one’s held her like this; no one’s kissed her like he can, now. He guides her back some, until he can see her face again. She looks down at him, fingers still at the back of his skull. She’s full of life in his arms, hot and radiant and everything he never expected to want, or deserve. That’s still up in the air, too, but he disregards it as she swoops down to kiss him again.

“Will you lie on your back?” he says between presses of their lips. She’s led him this far, but there’s still some she doesn’t know, where he’ll have to take charge. And the idea of covering her has grown roots in his thoughts and won’t go.

She seems to understand and rolls to the left, off of him and onto the sacking. He doesn’t take long to follow, sliding a leg between hers and bringing his thigh to the apex. She’s warm there, and damp, even through her smallclothes. There’s no mistaking that she wants him—no pretense to any of this. The need to give her pleasure suffuses him. He can’t disappoint her, not when they might only have tonight.

Carefully, he unlaces what remains of her clothing and puts his hand inside. Her ribs stand out as she draws in a preparatory breath. She’s still holding in the air when he touches her, finding her slick and warm and silken. Never a boy; she was always this—not yet a woman then but so clearly one now. He moves his fingers against her until they’re wet, seeking out the hidden places that’ll please her.

“Aren’t you supposed to use your cock?” she asks. There’s an edge to annoyance to her words, but it’s tempered a desire strong enough he can hear it.

“Eventually,” he tells her. “Do you not like this?” He makes a point to seek out a tender spot, hoping it’s the right one. She gives a short humming groan and he knows he’s found it.

“I like it fine,” she says, “but—” He makes a circle with the pads of his fingers and her mouth drops open. “Again.”

“As m’lady commands,” he says quietly, pressing a kiss to her breast as he works between her thighs.

She relaxes into it, her knees falling apart and eyes closing. Gendry keeps a steady pace, watching the minute shifts in her face as he searches for just the right stroke. He was told that some women are more receptive to this than others, and the those he had before took no small amount of time to rise to him. But none of them were as supple as Arya is, or so slick. His hand slides so easily against her that he barely has to put any pressure on for her to succumb. She presses her head back into the sacking as her hips rise up and into his fingers. Her back curves smoothly, bringing her belly taut. The scars stretch and whiten.

Gendry strokes her through it, until she tenses and closes her legs to stop him. When she opens her eyes, it’s only halfway, and her chest is rising and falling as she recovers. Gendry kisses her softly before withdrawing his hand. He tugs at the waist of her smallclothes. “Off with these,” he says. “If you want more.”

She seems to come more awake at that, her wolf’s teeth bared as she smiles. Her hand goes to his cock, which she squeezes through his own smallclothes. “I want more.”

They strip the last of their clothes off and both of them lie bare next to one another. Arya looks him over, though her gaze fixes on his cock. She takes him in hand, tentatively stroking the delicate skin. It feels perfect to have someone else touch him again, and he groans. She takes that for a good sign and moves her hand faster. Her thumb passes over his tip, where a drop of fluid breaks and smears.

“What now?” she says.

He runs his left palm down her thigh to her knee and guides her legs apart. “Put them ‘round me,” he tells her. She does, wrapping herself around his hips as he settles between her legs. His cock brushes her, but he’ll have to guide himself inside. Fingers wrapped around his length, he slicks himself with what she’s given. He watches her as he does it. She’s still breathing hard and her arms are lying at her sides. “Hold me tight,” Gendry says. “And try to relax. Let me in.”

She puts her arms around him again and says, “Go on.”

He finds her center, lining himself up. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but there’s always a little pain. It anyone can take it, however, it’s Arya Stark. There’s no point in doing it slowly and prolonging the sting. With a strong roll of his hips, he moves into her and tears her maidenhead.

Her fingers dig into his back and she grunts, but he only stills when he’s fully seated. She’s burning hot and tight around him; he can barely believe she’s let him have her like this. “I’m going to move,” he says. “You’re all right?”

“Yes,” she says, voice cracking. “But… Kiss me, will you?”

He’s glad to, and this time she’s the first to open her mouth, pushing her tongue into his. It’s messy and demanding and suits him fine. He plants his knees on the rough sacking for leverage, and then he withdraws and thrusts back into her. She makes a sound into the kiss, but he doesn’t stop; she would tell him if that’s what she wanted. Her legs are like a vise around his waist, her heels digging into his back. There’s no finesse to what they’re doing; it’s simple carnality that shakes Gendry to his core.

“You’ll be m’lady,” he said to her the day they parted. He meant it as a title, but in this a part of her does belong to him. No other man will have this with her. He’ll never possess her truly, as would her lord, but he’ll have this night for always.

She says his name, hushed and passionate, and he drives into her relentlessly. “Arya,” he whispers. “Gods above.” It’s a prayer of thanks and of forgiveness for taking what he hasn’t earned. No woman will match her, he’s certain, and it fills his heart with both joy and anguish, for they could die come the morning.

When he breaks, it’s sweet agony. His toes curl and he gives a final, desperate thrust into her as he spills his seed. There’s his mark in the very deepest parts of her; it gives him a base satisfaction. He kisses her mouth again as he comes back down, and then peppers her face with more. She’s smiling as he does it, rubbing his back.

“Are you well?” he asks when he can think clearly again.

She blinks up at him in blatant satiation. “Stupid bull. Of course I am.”

He tweaks her ear. “Why must you call me that?”

“To keep you humble,” she replies. “You’re a smith of rare talent and a decent man. Can’t let that go to your head.”

It does anyway. “Did I please you?”

She touches his face. “Very much. But now”—she shifts under him—“you’re crushing me.”

He rolls off of her, landing on his back on the sacking. His body is lax and mind calmed. Reaching over for his smallclothes, he wipes his cock and then holds out the linen for Arya.

She raises a brow. “Aren’t you going to have to wear these?”

“Don’t need them,” he says. “Go on, clean up.”

She dabs between her legs, looking away from him as if shy, but when she tosses the fabric away, she turns onto her side and throws an arm over Gendry’s chest. Her head she rests in the crook of his shoulder. “Did I please _you_?” she asks.

There’s no question. He replies: “More than I can tell. My gift’s with steel, not words.”

“I know that,” she laughs. “And neither is mine." A pause. "Did you ever think of it...before?”

“Of words?” he says.

She flicks his nipple, making him hiss. “ _No_. Of this.” She puts her leg over his, tightening her hold on him. “Of bedding me. Or”—she gives him a sly look—“of me bedding you.”

He can’t lie, so he doesn’t. “I can’t say I did. You were a skinny little whelp the last time I saw you. I fancy girls, but not ones who are trying to pass as boys. And you were years younger.” He swallows, but musters the courage to ask, “Did you think of it before?”

“Sometimes,” she says. “When I had grown some, anyway. You were one of the only people I ever trusted. And...you’re not so hard on the eyes.”

He chuckles. “A true compliment coming from you, m’lady.” She wrinkles her nose in distaste and he soothes her with a kiss to her brow. “Don’t deny who you are. Maybe you’re not a lady from the songs with flowing hair and gowns, but you’re still nobility. Your family name is hallowed.”

She sighs through her nose, the warm air passing over Gendry’s chest. “For a time I was no one. In Braavos with the Faceless Men.”

“Truly?” he asks. “Are they the ones who trained you?”

“They are.”

“But you left them.”

“Yes,” she says. “I couldn’t abandon everything I knew. I thought I wanted to deny who I was, but I didn’t. I’m a Stark, through and through.” She lifts her head to see him better. “And you’re a Baratheon.”

“Not a true-born one,” he says lowly.

Her right hand plays at his pectoral, circling the flat nipple she abused before. “Things aren’t the same as they used to be before Jon was raised up.”

Gendry goes rigid, seeing her meaning easily. “I haven’t wanted legitimacy,” he says. “I’m not meant to be noble stock, even if it’s half my blood. Can you see me in fine silks sitting at table and feasting, or, Gods preserve me, trying to rule? I couldn’t.”

“I can understand,” Ayra says. “I never wanted to be a queen, or even a lady of a house. I would have run away had my father tried to marry me to some southern lordling.”

“Run to Braavos?” Gendry asks.

She shrugs against him. “Or anywhere else that wasn’t a quaint fief on some lost hill.”

Gendry wraps his arm around her, hugging her shoulders. “Your father would have found someone better for you surely. Someone higher born.”

“I still would have run,” she says.

They’re silent for a time, Gendry making circles with his fingertips on her small shoulder.

“You never want to be wed then?” he asks eventually.

She fires back: “Do you?”

“I haven’t thought much about it. I’ve been scraping by to keep alive since I left King’s Landing and no woman wants a man who can’t feed and clothe her and give her a fair place to live.”

Arya hums. “And if you could? Would you marry?”

He considers. His life’s been defined by his trade and it’s what he’s wanted to do since he was apprenticed. He hadn’t been given a choice, but he’d learned to love it—and he was good. If he had a smithy of his own or was master of one in a castle, he could provide well for a wife, and proudly. And yet he’s met no one he’d consider taking as one. The flea-bitten girls who linger around the forge come to mind, and he frowns.

Arya sees it and her brow knits. “No?”

“It’s not to say that I wouldn’t ever,” he says, “but there’s no cause to right now. The Night King…”

“I know,” she says. “There’s no sense in looking further than tomorrow. Each day we have is one more than we expected.”

Gendry pulls her to him, drawing the clean scent of her hair into his nose. “If we could look ahead—if we dared—would you come to me again like this?”

Arya says nothing at first, and his stomach sinks. He likely shouldn’t have ventured the question. If she chose him not because she cared for him but because he had walked in at the right time, he doesn’t want to hear it. He cares for her, there’s no doubt about that. Once it was only to look out for a meddlesome Arry, but even then he had been fond of her. Now that she is a woman grown and one who has given him her innocence, she’s taken deeper root in his breast.

To his dismay, she turns the question on him again: “Would you want me to?”

He doesn’t know how to respond without either offending or wounding her. He can’t guess what she wants him to say, but he’s sure she would spot him in a lie directly. So, he settles for honesty: “If you’d have me, yes.”

She rises up onto her elbow, which rests at the center of his chest. “I think it’s plain enough I’d have you.” Sliding her hand down, she cups his cock. “Another night, and again this one.”

His blood simmers again at the notion. He needs some time to recover his strength, but it’s long until morning and he’ll gladly wear her marks into the coming battle. “Do something for me.” He taps his forefingers at the side of his neck. “Give me a fine bruise.” She eyes him confusedly, and he says, “With your mouth, your teeth.”

“Show me,” she says, baring her own throat.

Gendry pulls her to him and first kisses her pulse point. Then he sucks at the tender skin, bringing up the blood. When he pulls back, there’s a bruise. “Like that,” he says. “Easy enough.”

She says, “Everyone will see.”

He nods. “I know.”

The mark she gives him is a little sore after, from the nip of her teeth. He touches it, pressing to savor the feeling.

Ayra holds herself up above him, her gaze steady and gentle. “If we survive this,” she says, “stay at Winterfell.”

“What’s for me here?” he asks.

“A hot forge and knights to arm,” she replies. Her smile is sweet. “And someone to feed you and clothe you and give you a fair place to live.”

His heart grows full, warming him from the inside out, but he teases, “You’ll keep me like a favored dog, m’lady?”

She kisses him lightly. “A prize bull.”

Despite what they’ll have to face come first light, he takes comfort in her now, this strange, unpredictable woman who has somehow allowed him back into her life. She’s already brought lightness into his, giving him a pinprick of hope that when the battle’s over, he’ll find his way back into her arms.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided after s08e04 to expand this with a little afterword for our lovers, with their plans going into the future. I don't ship Gendry/lordship, so here we are with an alternate life plan for him.

Even the longest nights have their ends come morning. The winter sun was still masked by gray cloud as the day broke after the battle against the dead, but it was still a light Gendry wasn’t sure he would see. But there he was, standing amongst the corpses—both those they had fought and those who had fallen—within Winterfell’s high walls when darkness was chased away by the muted dawn.

Hours have passed now and what is considered high afternoon in the North has come, but his leathers are still stiff with blood and bodies are still being carried out, or wheeled in carts pulled by draft horses made skittish by the scent of death. The men or women pat their great, thickly furred necks and lead them on; the horses follow out of trust, but they show the whites of their eyes and their nostrils are flared wide with the barely suppressed instinct to flee.

They all should have run, perhaps, but the dead would have caught them. Their stand had to be made here, and they had done it; victory was theirs, and at the hands of the slip of a girl— _woman_ —who had shared his makeshift bed before the chaos broke.

Gendry hadn’t seen Arya since she had left the their little room, made warm by the nearby forge. They’d lain side by side for some time after their first coupling. She’d told him of her time with the Faceless Men and her journey back across the sea to Westeros. It was, she said, the most forthright she’d been with anyone in a long time. In return he told her of his months beyond the Wall and what he’d seen there: vast snowy plains and giants and death and castles long ago lost to ice. Those were days he didn’t long to see again, and he said as much to her. She had no reply to that, so simply took his face between her small hands and kissed him again.

Their second coupling was slower than the first, Arya taking in his nakedness, even appreciating it. He didn’t forget that she was his alone, if just for that short time. What future may come—death or a long life—he’d have her then, a memory he would will never to fade.

He gathers abandoned weapons from the ground, some of which he has to pull from bodies. He tosses them into a wheelbarrow an apprentice pushes behind him, the clatter of steel or dragonglass muffled in air made heavy by impending snow and smoke. Already there are pyres burning: a last guarantee that the army of the dead is destroyed. The fallen are gathered elsewhere, for a more formal funeral within the next days, but the faceless dead have been tossed into the trenches to burn. Their flesh was already decayed enough—even if unnaturally preserved—that there’s no stench and barely any ash. But the smoke wafts from the flames, coloring the sky and filling Gendry’s nose.

He heard that some were lost in the crypt, even if most made it out alive. The Lady Sansa was the first to order those with able bodies to start seeing to the fallen. There was nothing left of the ice dragon but a swiftly crumbling skull. Jon Snow was found standing near it in the aftermath, his face pale as death but his eyes still brown and full of life. The Queen had fallen from her own dragon during the battle and was recovered clutching the body of Ser Jorah Mormont to her breast with tears of grief running down her fair cheeks. Clegane, Seven curse him, was whole, too, as was Tormund Giantsbane. Gendry goes by them in the courtyard as they work, but they say nothing to each other.

There’s very little to be said anyway. Everyone who is still breathing barely seems able to reason out why they survived, when the odds were stacked so mightily against them.

 _It was her_ , Gendry thinks to himself as he pulls a shortsword from an Unsullied soldier’s chest. _Lethal little Arry saved us all._

 

* * *

 

Even with many hands, it takes two days to build the pyres and carry all the fallen to them. They stretch across the southern plain beyond Winterfell’s walls, scores of them stacked high with wood and straw and bodies. The survivors are gathered before them in solemn ranks, the nobles at the fore with torches held high to set alight the remains of their lost friends and servants and fellows. Gendry is close enough to catch most of Jon Snow’s words as he acknowledges the sacrifice that was made and the honor with which these fallen will be remembered. Jon doesn’t know most of their names, Gendry knows; he himself didn’t either. But he tries to do them due reverence as they go up in funerary flame.

The feasting that night is unlike any revel he’s been a part of before. There’s relief and joy to it, but also the desperate need to appreciate the lives they still have. Men in the hall shed tears openly as they thump each other on the back or even embrace. Drink makes tongues loose and fondness free.

Gendry sits across from Clegane, who is sourly eating his stew and bread and drinking wine—though not as much as the others around him. He used to be weak for drink, Gendry had heard, but no longer. Gendry eats his share, too, but spends more time eyeing the high table. The queen, Jon, and Lady Sansa all sit there happily imbibing, but conspicuously absent is Arya. He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of her, and while he tells himself he shouldn’t be disappointed, he is.

On their bed of sacking she said that she would come to him again, if she had the chance. His good sense says it had been to placate him, but he’d never known her to lie. However, the passing nights alone had left him more than enough hours to wonder if she regretted her choice to lie with him. He is, after all, a bastard boy with nothing but his skill with a hammer to recommend him. She’s a high-born lady, for all the ways she pretends she isn’t.

The bruise she gave him on his neck is still visible, if fading. Nobody paid it any mind, but as Gendry touches it now—just over his collar—Clegane’s canny gaze follows his fingers.

“No wight gave you that,” Clegane says, his voice the usual grinding stone rumble. He picks up a bony piece of chicken and takes a bite of the baked meat. “That’s a woman’s work.”

Gendry can feel heat in his face, even if he knows well he has nothing to be ashamed of. “What of it?” he says. He meant it to come sharply, but the words wavered.

Clegane barks a laugh, a few bits of chicken spraying from his mouth. “You just fought death itself and there’s fifty willing girls around this hall and you’re pining. Must have been some fuck.”

“Mind your filthy tongue,” Gendry snaps, scowling. “She’s not...that.”

“What?” says Clegane. “A fuck? ‘Course she is. Got a cunt, doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does,” Gendry says, though it feels beneath him to reduce Arya to that. She’s not some common whore, but—he catches himself—a lady. And she was his for a moment. He says to Clegane, “Just don’t speak of her that way.” His eyes turn to the high table again, where she is not.

Clegane’s attention goes with his and he pauses in chewing his chicken. “I’ll be a fucking shining knight if you’ve laid a hand on any one of them.” He leans in. “Unless it was Snow.” Gendry’s look of disgust sets him to laughing again. “Too bad. Well, Winterfell’s lady and the Queen of Dragons wouldn’t give you a second glance, is my guess. And the only other high-born one in this fucking castle is the little Stark, and she’d cut your cock off as fast as she’d look at you.”

Gendry takes a drink of his wine to hide his face; he doesn’t trust himself not to show the truth of it plainly. It must, even around the cup, because Clegane sets down his chicken bone and narrows his eyes. “ _Y_ _ou_ got the she-wolf in bed?”

“It’s none of your concern,” Gendry sputters, his stomach turning. Arya’s not something to brag about—not someone to add a notch to his belt like he heard his father did.

Clegane gives him a long, studying look and then sits back. “I saw her lurking around the storage sheds by the forge before I came here. Might be you could find her there.”

“What makes you think I want her?” Gendry asks. It’s a poor show of indifference; even he doesn’t believe it himself.

“You’re a terrible liar, bastard,” says Clegane. “Now fuck off and let me drink in peace.”

With little other choice, Gendry steps over the bench and away from the table. The level of noise in the hall had risen as the wine disappears and voices are echoing all around him as he squeezes behind revelers’ backs to get through to the front of the hall and the door. The hot, damp miasma of meat and unwashed bodies in the room is suddenly too much for him, and he wants nothing more than make his escape. A woman’s voice stops him:

“Gendry. That’s right, isn’t it?”

He freezes mid-stride, ten paces from the high table. She’s calling him from there: the queen. Hesitantly (but not so slow as to offend her), he comes to face the table. He says, “Yes, Your Grace.”

Daenerys Targaryen has the violet eyes of her kin and a full, round face. Some would say it’s a kind face, but Gendry has seen her unforgiving expressions, hard as dragonglass and twice as sharp. She’s not had reason to turn her gaze on him before. He thought, just as Clegane does, that he’s so far beneath her that she can’t see him at all. And yet, here she is, addressing him directly.

“I’ve been told,” she says loudly enough to be heard by the rest of the hall, which has gone quiet, “that you’re Robert Baratheon’s son.”

The wine and rich food roils in his stomach. “Yes, Your Grace, that’s true.”

She holds her soft chin high, somehow looking down her nose at him despite the fact that she sits lower. “You know, then, that your father killed my brother and tried to kill me, too.”

Gendry’s mouth is dry, his tongue seemingly swollen within it. He manages to force himself to say, “Yes, Your Grace, but that was long before I knew he was my father. I was raised in King’s Landing, but I had heard of Robert Baratheon only in tales. I didn’t know him.”

“Did you mourn him when he died?” the queen asks. She sounds genuinely curious, and yet Gendry is aware he must tread carefully. He wants to be free of her attention and the only way to do that is to reply.

“The whole city mourned him,” he says. “The man I was apprenticed to then hung a black banner from his shop.” He remembers it well: the city draped in dark fabric, some dyed poorly and others true black. Stories were told of the king, but work went on without him. Someone new would take his place, and little, Seven willing, would change. He continues, “That’s all that was done, Your Grace. It was no great loss to me.”

Daenerys favors him with an indulgent smile. “No, it wouldn’t have been.”

Gendry stands waiting, hoping she’ll release him now. The scrutiny of the rest of the hall is on him, too, and he hates it. He’s never wanted to be at the center of halls like this; he’s wanted his work to stand out, never his person.

“Tell me,” the queen says, “who rules in Storm’s End?”

Gendry flounders. He’s heard the keep’s name once or twice in the tales, but he knows nothing of its lords or ladies. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I don’t know.”

With the poise of her station, the queen rises to her feet. She’s still small—taller than Arya but not by much. She says, “No one rules there, for all the Baratheons are dead.” She folds her hands in front of her. “Save you.”

“I’m not a Baratheon, Your Grace,” Gendry says without hesitation. “I’m a bastard. Gendry _Waters_.”

She gestures to Jon Snow, who sits at her side at the center of the high table. “So too was Jon, but he’s been acknowledged. I have the power to do that for others. For you.” Taking the cup of wine before her, she raises it. “As of this moment, you are Gendry Baratheon, lord of Storm’s End.”

At first there’s only silence in the wake of her proclamation, and Gendry’s gut is so tight that he thinks he’s going to be sick. That’s far from what he needs now: to vomit on the floor at the Dragon Queen’s feet after she’s given him something almost any bastard in Westeros would want. He’s to have a keep, and all it entails. It’s that latter part that makes him dizzy. He’s not a leader of men; he’s not Jon Snow or Stannis Baratheon or even Lady Sansa; he’s not prepared to be a lord.

But he can’t say that now, not when Ser Davos is standing with his own wine cup raised and toasting Gendry’s new name and title. The others join him moments later, until the whole hall is ringing with it. He musters all the courage he has, and for the space of a few heartbeats thinks that he might be able to do this. He’s passed a cup, though, and when he drinks, the wine tastes the same as ever. The queen can give him legitimacy and titles and lands, but that doesn’t change who he is.

He’s pulled into a group of men at a nearby table and congratulations are offered. They called him “m’lord” and he fumbles for anything to say. At a loss, he drinks until his stomach is sloshing and he’s desperate for a piss, and with that excuse, is permitted to leave.

Daenerys is gone by the time he leaves, her seat vacant. Jon is surrounded by his friends, the loudest of whom is Tormund—no surprise there. Strangely, Lady Sansa is seated across from Clegane and in the short time Gendry’s passing by, he thinks he sees her take his hand.

The night hits him hard, the cold stealing the breath from his lungs. He gasps, flattening himself against the wall. The smallfolk are outside having their own celebration. There’s a fiddle being played somewhere and a few stumbling dancers are bumping into each other across the courtyard. The accents here are coarser and the jokes ruder. All are in good spirits and immediately Gendry is put at ease. He’s one of these people, not a high-born in his castle at Storm’s End.

He hurries around to the side of the building to relieve himself, pressing his left arm against the wall. He almost laughs thinking that he’s pissing on the hallowed stones of Winterfell, which had once been only a place in the stories he was told. The whole North was a legend to a small boy in King’s Landing with a tavern whore for a mother, but now he’s desecrating the ancient castle after nearly dying on its walls. Ending up in this place seems impossible to him. Once, he never thought he’d leave King’s Landing, and now he’s not sure he will ever go back.

When would he leave for Storm’s End, he wonders. And with whom? He has no household to take with him, only a borrowed horse and what’s on his back. He can’t imagine riding through the gates of a castle—one he’s never seen and can’t conjure in his wildest imaginings—alone and dirty from the road only to declare he’s now the lord of the place. He’d be thrown out on his ear and called a fool. And he’d deserve it; he’d be an imposter.

Once he’s done up the front of his trousers again, he re-enters the courtyard, narrowly avoiding a collision with a woman and man listing dangerously the side as they make their way to some hidden alcove. There’s unlikely to be many quiet places left unoccupied tonight. No doubt in nine months there will be a crop of fresh babes born—some of them bastards. Gendry might have been the product of a night just like this, if not after a battle then maybe one of King Robert’s hunts, like the one he had died on. Gendry’s children, should he ever sire any, he supposed would carry his father’s name— _his_ name, now.

His steps carry him toward the forge, where he knows he’ll find solace. He belongs there; it gives him purpose. He thinks he’ll go straight for the main furnace, but he steers instead toward the storage shed where he found Arya with her bow three days ago. Clegane said he’d seen her here. Maybe Gendry could tell her of his elevation and allow her to laugh in his face. He’d welcome it just now, he reckons.

He’s just stepped into the little room when a fully tipped arrow flies across his field of vision and embeds itself in the barrel to his left. His heart leaps into his throat as he skids to a halt, turning wide-eyed to see Arya standing at ten paces with that very same bow and another arrow nocked. He’s prepared this time when she fires it and it strikes in front of him.

“You could have killed me, you know,” he says as he sidesteps the barrel to approach her.

She deftly unstrings the bow, coiling the string up and tucking it into a concealed pocket. The bow itself she props in a corner. “Would have served you right for coming poking around where you’re not supposed to be,” she says.

He stops halfway to her to glance around the room. “Am I not supposed to be here? Have you claimed the place and decreed no one is allowed to enter unless by your express permission?” He’s teasing, which catches him off guard. His mood was low scant moments before, his thoughts racing with fears and uncertainties and dread. He sees her—nearly gets shot by her—and all of that fades.

“I might have,” she says. She balls her fists and plants them at her skinny waist.

Gendry opens his hands. “Then may I humbly seek permission from this house’s lady to enter?”

Arya reply comes whip-crack fast: “I’m no lady.”

Gendry keeps himself from smiling; he knows it would only make her angry. “The house’s _protector_ , then,” he says. “I come with no ill will.”

She surveys him sternly for a time, but then nods.

As he comes closer, the game is abandoned. There’s a cut above Arya’s eyebrow that’s just shallow enough to avoid stitching and an abrasion on her right cheek. There is nothing fragile about her, but he sees that she’s not made of all of steel.

“Are you well?” he asks, stopping just in front of her. “Not hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she says. Her gaze flicks up and down his front. “And you?”

“Fine as well.”

He wants to reach for her, but he’s unsure if he has that invitation any more than he had her leave to enter. Aside from the cuts, she looks lovely. Her hair hangs down the back of her neck save for what’s drawn back from her face in a braid behind her head. She’s clean—cleaner than him. He was able to wash in warm water in the forge that morning, but she looks as if she’s had a proper bath. If he was lord of Storm’s End, maybe he could have had a bath, too.

Something in that spurs him and he takes her by the waist and pulls her to him. She kisses him willingly and he feels a knot in his chest unfurl. She puts her arms around his neck as he strokes her back.

“Where have you been?” he murmurs as they pause for air and he kisses her forehead. “I haven’t seen you since—”

“I know,” she says, cutting him off. “There were some things that needed doing. I needed to be with Jon and Sansa.”

Gendry doesn’t begrudge them her attention, or that is, at least, what he tells himself. He asks, “Why weren’t you at the feast with them?”

She runs her palm over his short hair, following the contours of his skull. When she meets his eyes, her expression is unreadable. “I don’t belong with them, not at their high table with all their subjects toasting them. I’m their blood and I’ll always protect them, but I’m not _Lady Stark_ the way Sansa is. This is my place, like you said. I claim it.”

He does smile at her then, caressing her uninjured cheek. “I don’t belong with them, either,” he says.

Arya must notice the catch in his voice because her brow knits. With one hand at his jaw, she steers him back until she can see him. “What’s wrong?”

He’s unsure what to say, how to begin. It would have been easier if she had been there, and yet he’s glad she wasn’t. Maybe she would have toasted him, too, and that would have made it all real.

“The queen has elevated me,” he tells her at last. “She’s given me my father’s name and his seat at Storm’s End.”

Her surprise is apparent, but then she smiles. “Congratulations,” she says. It sounds genuine. However, when she speaks again, there’s more sobriety: “You’re not happy about it.”

He looks away, turning into her hand.

She continues: “You told me before that you didn’t want legitimacy. I thought maybe if it was really offered you’d change your mind, but”—she presses her thumb against his lips—“you really don’t.”

“She wants me to have castle, people to rule,” he says softly. “Arya, I _can’t_.” He feels the panic rising, the churning in his belly. His breath his coming faster and deeper through his nose and he can’t meet her eyes.

She takes his face gently and kisses his cheekbones, his brow, his nose. It helps calm him some, and he’s grateful. He realizes how much he’s wanted to be with her these past days. It’s been like a sailor’s knot in his breast, only getting tighter the more it’s pulled, save for the clever release that her presence brings. He’s craved her, even if only the sight of her. Now to have her hold him and soothe him is a balm he’s sure he can’t give up.

“Come with me,” he says with sudden conviction. When she pauses, he presses on: “I don’t know how to be a lord. I barely know how to use a fork, but I could do it, I think, if you were there.” His blood is rushing in his ears with the unexpected but elated realization of what this all could mean. He thought he could never have her as would her lord, but his elevation makes him something more. If she is willing to accept him, then he could survive anything. He takes her hands, holding them as if they are his only connection to the ground and anything he knows. “Come with me,” he says again. “ _Marry_ me.”

She stares at him, her lips parted and dark eyes bright. He hates that he can’t read her as easily as she can him because he’s never been this afraid, even when he was facing the dead, and he’s certain she can see it. He’s laid bare before her, at her mercy and serving at her whim. Maybe that’s all he’s ever been able to do, from when they were little more than children on the Kingsroad to when she had him on his back on the very sacks that still lie in the corner of the room—her sovereign kingdom. If she’ll have him, he’ll be like steel folded in her clever hands to make into the blade of her choosing. He’d be her lord in name only, for it would always be him who would bend the knee at her feet. He wasn’t raised with the good faith of the Seven, but he prays now to any god who will listen that she’ll give him this.

“You want a lady for your fine castle,” she says. “One who will care for the people and for you and be the mother of your children. You know I’m not that.”

The new wellspring of hope in him runs dry. He’s not truly surprised. Though they’ve spent more time apart than they have together, he sees the restlessness in her. He knew she wouldn’t be tied down as wife and mother, but it still makes him ache with want of that and with the disappointment that he'll never have it.

They talked of marriage on their night together and both of them had agreed that there was no reason to look far enough into the coming days to think of it when they had the Night King to fight. But that battle was over and while there was another one coming against Cersei Lannister’s assembled forces, they had days ahead of them to fill with grand castles and nights abed and countless arrows fired in hidden sheds. They _could_ be together.

Gendry, still holding Arya’s hand in his, kneels before her. “I’m begging you, Arya Stark,” he says. “You need not bear my children or wear a lady’s gowns, but I need you with me if I’m to survive this lordship.” He kisses her knuckles.

She pulls her hand from his grip and cups his cheek. “I can’t.”

His chin drops to his chest. In such a short time things have been turned on their head in ways he can’t comprehend or contend with. It’s true that he can’t be lord of Storm’s End. He’s a smith and that’s his place. He has no abilities to govern, and he doesn’t want to put his trust in some maester or squabbling advisers he doesn’t know. Like Arya, he’s trusted very few people in his life; she is among them, and she bolsters him. But her life has never been entwined with his, even if circumstance brought them together again after so many years.

Slowly, he stands again and her fingers fall away from his face. “I understand,” he says. “Goodnight.”

Unable to look at her longer, he takes his leave of the shed, turning into the forge proper. He sheds his jerkin and tosses it away. There are no more blades or axes to make, but there’s steel to spare and perhaps it’s time to fashion something frivolous and gaudy: a helm for show, like the one he sold on the Kingsroad. It will be fit for a knight, which he is not, and unsuited to both a lord and a smith.

He picks up his hammer and begins to heat the steel, and as he does, he settles into the only comfort he’s ever known. This is his place: the forge, the hammer, the steel. He cannot be lord of Storm’s End; he must beg the queen’s pardon and ask that she release him from his father’s name and legacy.

 

* * *

 

There is nowhere Gendry feels more out of place than in the castle. Even dressed in the finest things he owns—which aren’t fine at all—as soon as he walks in the next morning, it’s as if the walls are closing in around him and the eyes of anyone he passes settle disdainfully on him. He doesn’t belong here, and he certainly shouldn’t be permitted into the queen’s rooms. And yet when he arrives at her door, he tells the guards that he must speak to her.

The man outside raps on the door and calls, “Your Grace, Lord Baratheon seeks an audience.”

Gendry manages not to wince at the title, but barely.

If the queen replies, Gendry doesn’t hear it, but the guard opens the door and he steps into the sitting room. Daenerys is standing backlit by a far window, but the brightest point in the space is the crackling fire, which throws orange onto the paleness of her face. She’s dressed in gray and white, as she often is, bringing out the startling color of her eyes and the lightness of her hair. It’s braided intricately at the crown of her head, the ends at the small of her back in delicate curls.

“Lord Baratheon,” she says. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

He rehearsed this speech a hundred times over the course of a sleepless night, and he doesn’t hesitate to drop to one knee in deference. “Your Grace,” he begins, “I’m deeply honored by your kindness in raising me up to my father’s house and offering me the lordship of Storm’s End, but I’m unschooled in leadership and will make a poor lord. I’m not a great man like Jon Snow—Stark—who can rise to the challenge of rulership. So I plead with you, my queen, to release me from this obligation.”

She remains impassive, peering down at him with her cool gaze. “You see a lordship as an obligation,” she says after a moment.

“Of course, Your Grace. It would be my duty to take care of a castle and all its people. I’m ill suited to that, I swear to you. I’ll do poorly by them. They deserve more than me.”

“Your honesty does you credit,” Daenerys tells him, “but there have been many second sons and cousins who were not raised to lordship who have taken up the mantle and done exceptionally. I believe you could do that.”

Gendry keeps his gaze on the floor, but says, risking rebuke or even outright punishment, “Forgive me, Your Grace, but you don’t know me.”

Her white-blond brows rise and he prepares himself for the worst. However, she says, “That’s true, I don’t. Jon has told me of you and how fearless you were beyond the Wall. Lesser men have been masters of Storm’s End.”

“I fought because I had to, Your Grace.”

“And yet you will not take this title because you have to?” she asks. “Because your queen wills it?”

He swallows heavily, venturing to look at her. “I will serve you gladly, Your Grace, but I’d prefer to do it in the forge arming your knights and your soldiers as you take the Iron Throne.”

Daenerys folds her hands behind her back, still across the room from him. Her voice carries, heavy with authority: “We do need good smiths. But when the war is done, what will become of your trade?”

“Horses will always need shoes,” he says, though he doesn’t think he will be so reduced, “and farmers plows. I’ll always have work.” He pauses, recalling as he did many times over the night Arya’s offer for him to stay at Winterfell. He says: “There’s a place for me here, Your Grace, and there will be men to arm at this castle.”

She says, “You would stay here? Have you grown fond of the North?”

“There are things here I’d stay for,” he replies.

The queen’s mouth quirks up in a smile. “You mean someone, don’t you?”

“It’s an aspect of my choice,” he admits. “She wouldn’t agree to go with me to Storm’s End.”

Daenerys’s surprise is apparent. “What girl wouldn’t want to wed a newly made lord?”

He won’t say her name and bring her into this, but he tells the queen: “She has no need of and doesn’t care for any title. She has her own desires and being the lady of my house is not one of them.”

“I’m sorry for that,” says the queen, “but you would give up all that your new station offers you for heart of this woman?”

“I would, Your Grace,” Gendry says, “but it’s not only that. It’s true I won’t make the kind of lord you want me to be. I seek a simple life with no more battles and without the burden of nobility. Please, Your Grace, don’t make me do this.”

She comes toward him, standing just before where he kneels. “If this is what you wish,” she says, “I’ll grant it. But I will not make the offer again.”

Gendry’s relief is surely plain. “You do me great honor, Your Grace. You are good and merciful. I thank you.”

“Rise, then, Gendry Waters,” she says, “and return to your forge and your sweetheart. I hope she understands what you’ve done to keep her.”

“She doesn’t belong to me,” he says as he stands. “She’ll always be her own master, even if she deigns to accept my heart.”

Daenerys smiles in earnest. “Good luck to you both, then.” She gestures to the door and Gendry is dismissed.

He goes past the guards, the weight of a title gone from his shoulders. He doesn’t wish to stay in the castle any longer than he must, but he needs to see Arya and tell her of the freedom the queen has granted him. What difference it will make to her, he’s unsure; they made no promises should he stay, save for that she offered to ensure he was fed and had a roof over him, but he can’t go back to the forge without her knowing what’s transpired.

Her rooms are not far from the queen’s—they’re in the family’s wing of the castle—and soon enough he’s standing at her door hoping she’ll be there. He knocks insistently and waits with his pulse thrumming, unable to stand totally still. It seems like half a day, but then the door opens and she’s there.

“Hello,” he says, quite dumbly.

She eyes him with curiosity, but then opens the door to let him inside. She closes it behind him. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I’ve been to see the queen,” he replies. It all comes pouring out: his plea, Daenerys’s kindness, and, lastly, what he said about staying. “I can make a life for myself here,” he tells her, “even if it’s too bloody cold. You told me I’d have a place, should I want one. I do.”

Arya blinks at him, clearly sorting all of this in her mind. When she speaks, it’s sharp-edged: “What are you thinking? You’d choose a common life instead of a noble, _comfortable_ one? _Why_?” She levels a finger at him. “And you had better not say it’s because I wouldn’t go with you.”

Gendry flushes. He might have expected this. “I told you I couldn’t do it without your help,” he says, more forcefully than he intended. “You said you wouldn’t marry me, so I… It would have been wrong. I don’t want that life. I want to live quiet and purposeful. I can do that here in the forge.”

She rubs a hand over her brow, seemingly exasperated. “You’re an utter fool.”

He snaps, “I’m not. I chose the life I’m suited for, the trade that I’m good at and was trained to do. If you can deny everything you are, _Lady Stark_ , then I can decide to embrace everything _I am_. You don’t want your title and neither do I.” He advances on her, using his height to loom. “You have no place to fault me.”

Ayra glares up at him for a moment, but then deflates, her small shoulders rounding. “I don’t. You can choose your own path if I can.” She sighs. “You really want to stay at Winterfell?”

He nods, reaching for her hand. She allows him to take it.

“I won’t always be here,” she says as she looks at their interlaced fingers. “I have to go to King’s Landing come the morning. I have unfinished business there. I might not come back at all.”

“By choice,” Gendry asks, “or because you think you’ll die there?”

“Maybe both.”

His chest constricts, the knot forming again at the center of it. He hoped she would stay with him; it had seemed what she meant when last they were together. But maybe he was wrong. However, before he can think the better of it, he says, “Then you’ll know where to find me, should you return.”

Her expression softens and she raises their joined hands to her mouth. She kisses the back of his. “I can’t ask you to wait.”

He slips his free hand around her waist, more sure of this than he has been of most anything else in his life. He says, “It’s not your choice. It’s mine.”

Ayra shakes her head, but then steps closer to him and leans her head on his chest. “I’ve never known anyone more bullheaded than you, so I know you won’t change your mind.”

He finds himself laughing lightly. “You’re bloody stubborn, too. Won’t be a lady, won’t be No One, won’t be my wife. Do you know at all what you want?”

She holds him tightly, her words muffled in his jerkin: “Freedom. No bonds or titles or vows or babes clinging to my legs. I won’t be Lady Stark; I won’t be No One; I won’t be your wife; but I’ll give you my word that if I still have my life when my work is done in King’s Landing that I’ll come back to you here. I can’t promise to stay always, but—”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Gendry says. “But I’ll always be here.” He moves his hand down and lifts her face. “I love you.”

Her eyes shine, but don’t fill. She smiles at him. “Stupid bull,” she says, and then she kisses him.

The knot releases, the cord fraying until it’s no longer in his breast at all, and he knows he’s done right.


End file.
